Cut Your Research Time By Creating Shortcuts In Google Analytics

In a previous post, we covered how to measure social media impact using the real time feature in Google Analytics and how to create custom dashboards in Google Analytics, which are great and useful new tools in the dashboard. If you’ve put that into practice (or plan to), Google Analytics just made an easier way for you to customize and save those specific reports by creating shortcuts. No more segmenting and sorting each time you log into your GA dashboard. Just set it up once, save it, and view your results with a single click. Google Analytics Shortcuts are a way to save just about any customized report to be used time after time and can be adjusted to changing demands in real time. With new features like these being added continually to GA, everyday users can begin to navigate and understand what used to be a very confusing interface.

Uses For Shortcuts

The new shortcuts feature could save a company time when doing reporting and standardize what specific data gets tracked. For team members that aren’t familiar with an interface like this, an admin can set up certain shortcuts to be tracked by Marketers or even Administrative Assistants, without them having to know how or where to find anything but that tab in the analytics dashboard. Analyzing marketing data is crucial to any campaign so it’s vital that it be easy to navigate, easy to understand, and organized.

Create A Shortcut

Log into your GA dashboard in either the Standard or Custom reporting tab. You’ll see the new Shortcut button listed in the utility bar.

Select any metric you want to create a shortcut for and click the Shortcut button. Name your shortcut and click OK.

Putting Shortcuts To Use

Once your shortcut is added, you’ll be taken to the Shortcuts section in the Home page. Your new shortcuts will now be stored there for easy access. The shortcuts remember your customized settings, so you don’t have to reconfigure a report each time you open it. At this time, Real-Time, Intelligence Events, and Goals cannot be added to the shortcuts menu, but hopefully that will be a feature before it’s released from beta.

If you need to make any changes to the shortcut after it’s created, you can do that by opening the shortcut, making the changes necessary, then click Save in the utility bar.

Manage Or Delete Shortcuts

In the Overview page of the Home and Shortcuts tabs, you’ll see a list of your shortcuts. Each has a View or Delete button to manage or remove any outdated shortcuts. Shortcuts can also be emailed or exported like any other standard report.

Fastest Way To Access A Report

The menu in the left sidebar is an easy place to find all of your saved reports but if you have a lot of them, it may become daunting to click through all the sections to find the report you need. A fast and easy alternative is to type the name of the report you want to access. As you type, you’ll see reports auto-populate. Once you see the report you’re looking for, click on it to access the data.

Conclusion

There have been so many great additions to GA recently, making it user friendly without having to be tech savvy. Start making your shortcuts today, to save yourself time tomorrow.